Books: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Introduction I.
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John Lothrop Motley >> The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Introduction I.
The polity of each race differed widely from that of the other. The
government of both may be said to have been republican, but the Gallic
tribes were aristocracies, in which the influence of clanship was a
predominant feature; while the German system, although nominally regal,
was in reality democratic. In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the
priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves. The knights
or nobles were all trained to arms. Each went forth to battle, followed
by his dependents, while a chief of all the clans was appointed to take
command during the war. The prince or chief governor was elected
annually, but only by the nobles. The people had no rights at all, and
were glad to assign themselves as slaves to any noble who was strong
enough to protect them. In peace the Druids exercised the main functions
of government. They decided all controversies, civil and criminal. To
rebel against their decrees was punished by exclusion from the
sacrifices--a most terrible excommunication, through which the criminal
was cut off from all intercourse with his fellow-creatures.
With the Germans, the sovereignty resided in the great assembly of the
people. There were slaves, indeed, but in small number, consisting
either of prisoners of war or of those unfortunates who had gambled away
their liberty in games of chance. Their chieftains, although called by
the Romans princes and kings, were, in reality, generals, chosen by
universal suffrage. Elected in the great assembly to preside in war,
they were raised on the shoulders of martial freemen, amid wild battle
cries and the clash of spear and shield. The army consisted entirely of
volunteers, and the soldier was for life infamous who deserted the field
while his chief remained alive. The same great assembly elected the
village magistrates and decided upon all important matters both of peace
and war. At the full of the moon it was usually convoked. The nobles
and the popular delegates arrived at irregular intervals, for it was an
inconvenience arising from their liberty, that two or three days were
often lost in waiting for the delinquents. All state affairs were in the
hands of this fierce democracy. The elected chieftains had rather
authority to persuade than power to command.
The Gauls were an agricultural people. They were not without many arts
of life. They had extensive flocks and herds; and they even exported
salted provisions as far as Rome. The truculent German, Ger-mane,
Heer-mann, War-man, considered carnage the only useful occupation,
and despised agriculture as enervating and ignoble. It was base, in his
opinion, to gain by sweat what was more easily acquired by blood. The
land was divided annually by the magistrates, certain farms being
assigned to certain families, who were forced to leave them at the
expiration of the year. They cultivated as a common property the lands
allotted by the magistrates, but it was easier to summon them to the
battle-field than to the plough. Thus they were more fitted for the
roaming and conquering life which Providence was to assign to them for
ages, than if they had become more prone to root themselves in the soil.
The Gauls built towns and villages. The German built his solitary hut
where inclination prompted. Close neighborhood was not to his taste.
In their system of religion the two races were most widely contrasted.
The Gauls were a priest-ridden race. Their Druids were a dominant caste,
presiding even over civil affairs, while in religious matters their
authority was despotic. What were the principles of their wild Theology
will never be thoroughly ascertained, but we know too much of its
sanguinary rites. The imagination shudders to penetrate those shaggy
forests, ringing with the death-shrieks of ten thousand human victims,
and with the hideous hymns chanted by smoke-and-blood-stained priests to
the savage gods whom they served.
The German, in his simplicity, had raised himself to a purer belief than
that of the sensuous Roman or the superstitious Gaul. He believed in a
single, supreme, almighty God, All-Vater or All-father. This Divinity
was too sublime to be incarnated or imaged, too infinite to be enclosed
in temples built with hands. Such is the Roman's testimony to the lofty
conception of the German. Certain forests were consecrated to the unseen
God whom the eye of reverent faith could alone behold. Thither, at
stated times, the people repaired to worship. They entered the sacred
grove with feet bound together, in token of submission. Those who fell
were forbidden to rise, but dragged themselves backwards on the ground.
Their rules were few and simple. They had no caste of priests, nor were
they, when first known to the Romans, accustomed to offer sacrifice. It
must be confessed that in a later age, a single victim, a criminal or a
prisoner, was occasionally immolated. The purity of their religion was
soon stained by their Celtic neighborhood. In the course of the Roman
dominion it became contaminated, and at last profoundly depraved. The
fantastic intermixture of Roman mythology with the gloomy but modified
superstition of Romanized Celts was not favorable to the simple character
of German theology. The entire extirpation, thus brought about, of any
conceivable system of religion, prepared the way for a true revelation.
Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the
Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion--the sanguinary
superstition of the Druid, the sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the
elevated but dimly groping creed of the German, stood for centuries, face
to face, until, having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they
all faded away in the pure light of Christianity.
Thus contrasted were Gaul and German in religious and political systems.
The difference was no less remarkable in their social characteristics.
The Gaul was singularly unchaste. The marriage state was almost unknown.
Many tribes lived in most revolting and incestuous concubinage; brethren,
parents, and children, having wives in common. The German was loyal as
the Celt was dissolute. Alone among barbarians, he contented himself
with a single wife, save that a few dignitaries, from motives of policy,
were permitted a larger number. On the marriage day the German offered
presents to his bride--not the bracelets and golden necklaces with which
the Gaul adorned his fair-haired concubine, but oxen and a bridled horse,
a sword, a shield, and a spear-symbols that thenceforward she was to
share his labors and to become a portion of himself.
They differed, too, in the honors paid to the dead. The funerals of the
Gauls were pompous. Both burned the corpse, but the Celt cast into the
flames the favorite animals, and even the most cherished slaves and
dependents of the master. Vast monuments of stone or piles of earth were
raised above the ashes of the dead. Scattered relics of the Celtic age
are yet visible throughout Europe, in these huge but unsightly memorials,
The German was not ambitious at the grave. He threw neither garments nor
odors upon the funeral pyre, but the arms and the war-horse of the
departed were burned and buried with him.
The turf was his only sepulchre, the memory of his valor his only
monument. Even tears were forbidden to the men. "It was esteemed
honorable," says the historian, "for women to lament, for men to
remember."
The parallel need be pursued no further. Thus much it was necessary to
recall to the historical student concerning the prominent characteristics
by which the two great races of the land were distinguished:
characteristics which Time has rather hardened than effaced. In the
contrast and the separation lies the key to much of their history. Had
Providence permitted a fusion of the two races, it is, possible, from
their position, and from the geographical and historical link which they
would have afforded to the dominant tribes of Europe, that a world-empire
might have been the result, different in many respects from any which has
ever arisen. Speculations upon what might have been are idle. It is
well, however; to ponder the many misfortunes resulting from a mutual
repulsion, which, under other circumstances and in other spheres, has
been exchanged for mutual attraction and support.
It is now necessary to sketch rapidly the political transformations
undergone by the country, from the early period down to the middle of the
sixteenth century; the epoch when the long agony commenced, out of which
the Batavian republic was born.
III.
The earliest chapter in the history of the Netherlands was written by
their conqueror. Celtic Gaul is already in the power of Rome; the Belgic
tribes, alarmed at the approaching danger, arm against the universal,
tyrant. Inflammable, quick to strike, but too fickle to prevail against
so powerful a foe, they hastily form a league of almost every clan. At
the first blow of Caesar's sword, the frail confederacy falls asunder
like a rope of sand. The tribes scatter in all directions.
Nearly all are soon defeated, and sue for mercy. The Nervii, true to the
German blood in their, veins, swear to die rather than surrender. They,
at least, are worthy of their cause. Caesar advances against them at the
head of eight legions. Drawn up on the banks of the Sambre, they await
the Roman's approach. In three days' march Caesar comes up with them,
pitches his camp upon a steep hill sloping down to the river, and sends
some cavalry across. Hardly have the Roman horsemen crossed the stream,
than the Nervii rush from the wooded hill-top, overthrow horse and rider,
plunge in one great mass into the current, and, directly afterwards, are
seen charging up the hill into the midst of the enemy's force. "At the
same moment," says the conqueror, "they seemed in the wood, in the river,
and within our lines." There is a panic among the Romans, but it is
brief. Eight veteran Roman legions, with the world's victor at their
head, are too much for the brave but undisciplined Nervii. Snatching a
shield from a soldier, and otherwise unarmed, Caesar throws himself into
the hottest of the fight. The battle rages foot to foot and hand to hand
but the hero's skill, with the cool valor of his troops, proves
invincible as ever. The Nervii, true to their vow, die, but not a man
surrenders. They fought upon that day till the ground was heaped with
their dead, while, as the foremost fell thick and fast, their comrades,
says the Roman, sprang upon their piled-up bodies, and hurled their
javelins at the enemy as from a hill. They fought like men to whom life
without liberty was a curse. They were not defeated, but exterminated.
Of many thousand fighting men went home but five hundred. Upon reaching
the place of refuge where they had bestowed their women and children,
Caesar found, after the battle, that there were but three of their
senators left alive. So perished the Nervii. Caesar commanded his
legions to treat with respect the little remnant of the tribe which had
just fallen to swell the empty echo of his glory, and then, with hardly a
breathing pause, he proceeded to annihilate the Aduatici, the Menapii,
and the Morini.
Gaul being thus pacified, as, with sublime irony, he expresses himself
concerning a country some of whose tribes had been annihilated, some sold
as slaves, and others hunted to their lairs like beasts of prey, the
conqueror departed for Italy. Legations for peace from many German races
to Rome were the consequence of these great achievements. Among others
the Batavians formed an alliance with the masters of the world. Their
position was always an honorable one. They were justly proud of paying
no tribute, but it was, perhaps, because they had nothing to pay. They
had few cattle, they could give no hides and horns like the Frisians, and
they were therefore allowed to furnish only their blood. From this time
forth their cavalry, which was the best of Germany, became renowned in
the Roman army upon every battle-field of Europe.
It is melancholy, at a later moment, to find the brave Batavians
distinguished in the memorable expedition of Germanicus to crush the
liberties of their German kindred. They are forever associated with the
sublime but misty image of the great Hermann, the hero, educated in Rome,
and aware of the colossal power of the empire, who yet, by his genius,
valor, and political adroitness, preserved for Germany her nationality,
her purer religion, and perhaps even that noble language which her late-
flowering literature has rendered so illustrious--but they are associated
as enemies, not as friends.
Galba, succeeding to the purple upon the suicide of Nero, dismissed the
Batavian life-guards to whom he owed his elevation. He is murdered, Otho
and Vitellius contend for the succession, while all eyes are turned upon
the eight Batavian regiments. In their hands the scales of empire seem
to rest. They declare for Vitellius, and the civil war begins. Otho is
defeated; Vitellius acknowledged by Senate and people. Fearing, like his
predecessors, the imperious turbulence of the Batavian legions, he, too,
sends them into Germany. It was the signal for a long and extensive
revolt, which had well nigh overturned the Roman power in Gaul and Lower
Germany.
IV.
Claudius Civilis was a Batavian of noble race, who had served twenty-five
years in the Roman armies. His Teutonic name has perished, for, like
most savages who become denizens of a civilized state, he had assumed an
appellation in the tongue of his superiors. He was a soldier of fortune,
and had fought wherever the Roman eagles flew. After a quarter of a
century's service he was sent in chains to Rome, and his brother
executed, both falsely charged with conspiracy. Such were the triumphs
adjudged to Batavian auxiliaries. He escaped with life, and was disposed
to consecrate what remained of it to a nobler cause. Civilis was no
barbarian. Like the German hero Arminius, he had received a Roman
education, and had learned the degraded condition of Rome. He knew the
infamous vices of her rulers; he retained an unconquerable love for
liberty and for his own race. Desire to avenge his own wrongs was
mingled with loftier motives in his breast. He knew that the sceptre was
in the gift of the Batavian soldiery. Galba had been murdered, Otho had
destroyed himself, and Vitellius, whose weekly gluttony cost the empire
more gold than would have fed the whole Batavian population and converted
their whole island-morass into fertile pastures, was contending for the
purple with Vespasian, once an obscure adventurer like Civilis himself,
and even his friend and companion in arms. It seemed a time to strike a
blow for freedom.
By his courage, eloquence, and talent for political combinations,
Civilis effected a general confederation of all the Netherland tribes,
both Celtic and German. For a brief moment there was a united people, a
Batavian commonwealth. He found another source of strength in German
superstition. On the banks of the Lippe, near its confluence with the
Rhine, dwelt the Virgin Velleda, a Bructerian weird woman, who exercised
vast influence over the warriors of her nation. Dwelling alone in a
lofty tower, shrouded in a wild forest, she was revered as an oracle.
Her answers to the demands of her worshippers concerning future events
were delivered only to a chosen few. To Civilis, who had formed a close
friendship with her, she promised success, and the downfall of the Roman
world. Inspired by her prophecies, many tribes of Germany sent large
subsidies to the Batavian chief.
The details of the revolt have been carefully preserved by Tacitus, and
form one of his grandest and most elaborate pictures. The spectacle of a
brave nation, inspired by the soul of one great man and rising against an
overwhelming despotism, will always speak to the heart, from generation
to generation. The battles, the sieges, the defeats, the indomitable
spirit of Civilis, still flaming most brightly when the clouds were
darkest around him, have been described by the great historian in his
most powerful manner. The high-born Roman has thought the noble
barbarian's portrait a subject worthy his genius.
The struggle was an unsuccessful one. After many victories and many
overthrows, Civilis was left alone. The Gallic tribes fell off, and sued
for peace. Vespasian, victorious over Vitellius, proved too powerful for
his old comrade. Even the Batavians became weary of the hopeless
contest, while fortune, after much capricious hovering, settled at last
upon the Roman side. The imperial commander Cerialis seized the moment
when the cause of the Batavian hero was most desperate to send emissaries
among his tribe, and even to tamper with the mysterious woman whose
prophecies had so inflamed his imagination. These intrigues had their
effect. The fidelity of the people was sapped; the prophetess fell away
from her worshipper, and foretold ruin to his cause. The Batavians
murmured that their destruction was inevitable, that one nation could not
arrest the slavery which was destined for the whole world. How large a
part of the human race were the Batavians? What were they in a contest
with the whole Roman empire? Moreover, they were not oppressed with
tribute. They were only expected to furnish men and valor to their proud
allies. It was the next thing to liberty. If they were to have rulers,
it was better to serve a Roman emperor than a German witch.
Thus murmured the people. Had Civilis been successful, he would have
been deified; but his misfortunes, at last, made him odious in spite of
his heroism. But the Batavian was not a man to be crushed, nor had he
lived so long in the Roman service to be outmatched in politics by the
barbarous Germans. He was not to be sacrificed as a peace-offering to
revengeful Rome. Watching from beyond the Rhine the progress of
defection and the decay of national enthusiasm, he determined to be
beforehand with those who were now his enemies. He accepted the offer of
negotiation from Cerialis. The Roman general was eager to grant a full
pardon, and to re-enlist so brave a soldier in the service of the empire.
A colloquy was agreed upon. The bridge across the Nabalia was broken
asunder in the middle, and Cerialis and Civilis met upon the severed
sides. The placid stream by which Roman enterprise had connected the
waters of the Rhine with the lake of Flevo, flowed between the imperial
commander and the rebel chieftain.
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Here the story abruptly terminates. The remainder of the Roman's
narrative is lost, and upon that broken bridge the form of the Batavian
hero disappears forever. His name fades from history: not a syllable is
known of his subsequent career; every thing is buried in the profound
oblivion which now steals over the scene where he was the most imposing
actor.
The soul of Civilis had proved insufficient to animate a whole people;
yet it was rather owing to position than to any personal inferiority,
that his name did not become as illustrious as that of Hermann. The
German patriot was neither braver nor wiser than the Batavian, but he
had the infinite forests of his fatherland to protect him. Every legion
which plunged into those unfathomable depths was forced to retreat
disastrously, or to perish miserably. Civilis was hemmed in by the
ocean; his country, long the basis of Roman military operations, was
accessible by river and canal, The patriotic spirit which he had for a
moment raised, had abandoned him; his allies had deserted him; he stood
alone and at bay, encompassed by the hunters, with death or surrender as
his only alternative. Under such circumstances, Hermann could not have
shown more courage or conduct, nor have terminated the impossible
struggle with greater dignity or adroitness.
The contest of Civilis with Rome contains a remarkable foreshadowing of
the future conflict with Spain, through which the Batavian republic,
fifteen centuries later, was to be founded. The characters, the events,
the amphibious battles, desperate sieges, slippery alliances, the traits
of generosity, audacity and cruelty, the generous confidence, the broken
faith seem so closely to repeat themselves, that History appears to
present the self-same drama played over and over again, with but a change
of actors and of costume. There is more than a fanciful resemblance
between Civilis and William the Silent, two heroes of ancient German
stock, who had learned the arts of war and peace in the service of a
foreign and haughty world-empire. Determination, concentration of
purpose, constancy in calamity, elasticity almost preternatural, self-
denial, consummate craft in political combinations, personal fortitude,
and passionate patriotism, were the heroic elements in both. The
ambition of each was subordinate to the cause which he served. Both
refused the crown, although each, perhaps, contemplated, in the sequel,
a Batavian realm of which he would have been the inevitable chief.
Both offered the throne to a Gallic prince, for Classicus was but the
prototype of Anjou, as Brinno of Brederode, and neither was destined,
in this world, to see his sacrifices crowned with success.
The characteristics of the two great races of the land portrayed
themselves in the Roman and the Spanish struggle with much the same
colors. The Southrons, inflammable, petulant, audacious, were the first
to assault and to defy the imperial power in both revolts, while the
inhabitants of the northern provinces, slower to be aroused, but of more
enduring wrath, were less ardent at the commencement, but; alone,
steadfast at the close of the contest. In both wars the southern Celts
fell away from the league, their courageous but corrupt chieftains having
been purchased with imperial gold to bring about the abject submission of
their followers; while the German Netherlands, although eventually
subjugated by Rome, after a desperate struggle, were successful in the
great conflict with Spain, and trampled out of existence every vestige
of her authority. The Batavian republic took its rank among the leading
powers of the earth; the Belgic provinces remained Roman, Spanish,
Austrian property.
V.
Obscure but important movements in the regions of eternal twilight,
revolutions, of which history has been silent, in the mysterious depths
of Asia, outpourings of human rivets along the sides of the Altai
mountains, convulsions up-heaving r mote realms and unknown dynasties,
shock after shock throb bing throughout the barbarian world and dying
upon the edge of civilization, vast throes which shake the earth as
precursory pangs to the birth of a new empire--as dying symptoms of the
proud but effete realm which called itself the world; scattered hordes of
sanguinary, grotesque savages pushed from their own homes, and hovering
with vague purposes upon the Roman frontier, constantly repelled and
perpetually reappearing in ever-increasing swarms, guided thither by a
fierce instinct, or by mysterious laws--such are the well known phenomena
which preceded the fall of western Rome. Stately, externally powerful,
although undermined and putrescent at the core, the death-stricken empire
still dashed back the assaults of its barbarous enemies.
During the long struggle intervening between the age of Vespasian and
that of Odoacer, during all the preliminary ethnographical revolutions
which preceded the great people's wandering, the Netherlands remained
subject provinces. Their country was upon the high road which led the
Goths to Rome. Those low and barren tracts were the outlying marches of
the empire. Upon that desolate beach broke the first surf from the
rising ocean of German freedom which was soon to overwhelm Rome. Yet,
although the ancient landmarks were soon well nigh obliterated, the
Netherlands still remained faithful to the Empire, Batavian blood was
still poured out for its defence.
By the middle of the fourth century, the Franks and Allemanians, alle-
mannez, all-men, a mass of united Germans are defeated by the Emperor
Julian at Strasburg, the Batavian cavalry, as upon many other great
occasions, saving the day for despotism. This achievement, one of the
last in which the name appears upon historic record, was therefore as
triumphant for the valor as it was humiliating to the true fame of the
nation. Their individuality soon afterwards disappears, the race having
been partly exhausted in the Roman service, partly merged in the Frank
and Frisian tribes who occupy the domains of their forefathers.
For a century longer, Rome still retains its outward form, but the
swarming nations are now in full career. The Netherlands are
successively or simultaneously trampled by Franks, Vandals, Alani, Suevi,
Saxons, Frisians, and even Sclavonians, as the great march of Germany to
universal empire, which her prophets and bards had foretold, went
majestically forward. The fountains of the frozen North were opened,
the waters prevailed, but the ark of Christianity floated upon the flood.
As the deluge assuaged, the earth had returned to chaos, the last pagan
empire had been washed out of existence, but the dimly, groping,
faltering, ignorant infancy of Christian Europe had begun.